Wednesday, July 14, 2010

However, what makes a good segue? What makes some segues sound so smooth to the ear compared to others? Any musician who has an interest in improvisation knows that when jamming, you have to adhere to a certain key. Most Phish jams are based solely on a single key and often do not deviate from that key throughout the entire jam. A little knowledge of each song and jam, along with general Phish knowledge, can help predict possible songs the band may segue into. OF COURSE general Phish knowledge will also tell you that you NEVER know what to expect, and there have been tons of segues throughout Phishtory that simply make their own rules and switch keys altogether. Also, songs like David Bowie, Maze and Harry Hood, have an into on the hi-drums, which makes them easy to segue into (and they are quite often) since they don't start on any specific key. Many of the cover songs that are used for improvisation vehicles have the jam at the end of the song, leaving no remainder of the actual song to return to and often segue.

Bob Weir doesn’t need a miracle every day to give his audiophile ears some listening pleasure. When the former Grateful Dead guitarist/vocalist isn’t playin’ in the band on his tours with current gigs Ratdog and Furthur (both of which serve up big doses of Dead material, of course), Weir can hang in his home studio and sunshine daydream while cranking up a McIntosh Labs-fueled audio system.

It’s not often we get a peek into the home rigs of musicians, so we were happy McIntosh sent along a photo and some info on Weir (you can check out www.furthur.net for upcoming tour dates), who’s still knocking on the golden door of northern California as his home.

Though they have shared bills in the past, Widespread Panic and Umphrey’s McGee have rarely crossed paths onstage. That changed last night when Umphrey’s McGee keyboardist Joel Cummins sat in with Panic at Columbus, OH’s LC Pavillion. After Umphrey’s McGee opened the show, Cummins returned during Panic’s headlining set to play on the Widespread original “Space Wrangler” and a cover of the Guess Who’s “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature.” Cummins is the first member of Umphrey’s to join Panic onstage during its set.

For a band that communicates so proficiently within their improvisational playing, the question after the first leg of summer has to be “Why doesn’t Phish make fluid segues between their songs?” With a handful of exceptions, the band’s attempts at legitimate transitions have ranged from rocky to complete train wrecks. More often than not, Trey directly causes these indecisive changes by not communicating his intentions to his band mates before impatiently pushing through the music with a new song. There were more than a few times last month where the band was fully engaged in a jam, and Trey busted into the piece like a bully scratching the needle over the record, forcing his choice upon everyone.